Stream 10: Nordic War Stories

How does the Second World War (1939–1945) continue to inform, inspire and complicate Nordic literature and film? In the new millennium, “the war” has re-emerged in literary fiction, cinematic productions and historical scholarship as a significant discursive site for national imaginaries, contested historical scholarship, and for representations of personal trauma and violence. During World War II, the Nordic region was clenched between belligerent powers: Finland resisted Soviet Russian aggression; Denmark and Norway were occupied by Nazi Germany; Sweden maintained neutrality by concessions to the Axis powers; Iceland and the Faeroe Islands were occupied by the (British and American) Allies. This stream investigates the differing fates and modern self-understandings of these small nations at the northern periphery of Europe and in the North Atlantic by exploring cinematic productions, literary fiction, memoirs, historiography and visual media dealing with this particular historical period. Some of the questions that might be pursued in individual panels might include: How are Nordic national historiographies of the war contested in scholarship since the 1990s? What kind of enemy representations do we encounter in the immediate postwar period, relative to those of recent decades? How is death, trauma and the violence of war affected in literary and cinematic texts and other media? How is masculinity represented in relation to war crimes and violence? Papers might explore canonized texts (for example, by Blixen, Dreyer, Hamsun, Lagerkvist, Laxness, Linna, Moberg, or Undset), or contemporary literary fictions that relocate war experiences in national or familial pasts. Alternatively, panels might focus on cinematic productions since the 1990s that reframe or re-imagine the historical circumstances of combat, collaboration, occupation, persecution, or resistance. Finally, papers might investigate texts that were published, produced, or translated under political censorship during the war years.